Food guide
Eating in Brunei: Ambuyat, Nasi Katok and a Dry Table
Brunei eats much like the Malay world around it — rice, sambal, fried chicken, grilled fish, noodles and a great many sweet cakes — but two things set its table apart. One is ambuyat, a national dish that is eaten unlike anything a visitor will have tried before; the other is what is missing, because nothing alcoholic is sold anywhere in the country, and meals are built around that without anyone remarking on it.
Updated 2026-09-19
Ambuyat: twirl, dip, swallow
Ambuyat is made from the starch of the sago palm, stirred with hot water into a translucent, glue-like paste with almost no flavour of its own. It is eaten with candas, a V-shaped bamboo utensil joined at one end: you twirl a bite-sized clump of the paste around its tips, dip it into cacah, a dipping sauce that is usually sour and spicy, and swallow it without chewing. It arrives in a shared bowl surrounded by side dishes — grilled or fried fish, vegetables, fern shoots and sambals — and a meal of it is a slow, communal affair rather than a quick plate. The starch was long the food of hard times, when rice was too expensive to eat every day, which is part of the affection Bruneians keep for it. It can be found at food markets and at restaurants serving traditional Malay food, and it is best eaten with company, because it is meant to be shared.
Nasi katok, the rice parcel for any hour
The everyday counterpart to ambuyat is nasi katok: a portion of plain rice, a piece of fried chicken and a spoonful of sambal, wrapped in paper and sold cheaply from small shops and stalls. The name means, roughly, knock-rice — the story goes that customers once had to knock on the seller's door to buy it — and it is the meal Bruneians reach for at any hour, late at night included. Beyond it the Malay staples are all here, from satay to noodle dishes, along with excellent tropical fruit, and in Bandar Seri Begawan the Gadong night market is where the capital grazes in the evening.
Kelupis, kuih and the sweet side
The snacks are where Bruneian food gets most local. Kelupis are cakes of glutinous rice wrapped in nyirik leaves, a Bisaya tradition often served at weddings and special occasions; some are made with dried shrimp or anchovies, and the plain ones are eaten sweet with a peanut or curry dip. Kuih mor, small, soft biscuits made with flour, oil and powdered sugar, are handed out at Malay weddings and gatherings as a small token of thanks, and penyaram — fried cakes of rice flour and coconut milk, nicknamed kuih UFO for their flying-saucer shape — are a Bruneian Malay and Bajau creation. All of them turn up at markets and stalls, and they are the easiest way to taste the country between meals.
A dry country at the table
No alcohol is sold in Brunei — not in shops, restaurants or hotels — so meals come with juice, tea, coffee and soft drinks, and nobody expects anything else. Non-Muslim visitors aged 17 and over may bring in a limited personal allowance under Brunei's customs rules, declared on arrival and drunk in private; it is never served, and the dining table stays dry. The practical adjustment is simply to plan evenings around food rather than drinks — the night markets, a long ambuyat meal, or dinner once the fast is broken during Ramadan.